1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of providing a user interface for instructing a printing apparatus to print.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a personal computer (PC) can instruct a printing apparatus on various printing conditions or printing attributes by using a printer driver installed on the PC. Contents of the instructions include, for example, the size of a sheet, the number of sheets to be outputted, color printing, double-sided printing, sheet printing and the like.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-118095, a technique of setting a rule for each folder whether or not to cause a printing apparatus to immediately perform printing and a rule for defining how to deal with a plurality of pages. The print data stored in the folder is immediately printed or a plurality of print pages is printed as a single job according to the rules set to the folder.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-256165, a technique of hierarchically organizing folders in one-to-one correspondence with printing conditions has been proposed. Specifically, according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-256165, the highest folder corresponds to the paper size and the folder at the next highest-level corresponds to the number of printed sheets. In the invention of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-256165, printing conditions needed in printing can be selected one by one as folders from the highest folder to the lowest folder are selected in order. When print data is stored in the lowest folder, print processing is performed according to the selected printing conditions.
A printing apparatus with various functions has been appearing (it is also referred to as a “multi-function peripheral”). There is also a demand for such a printing apparatus that can be used from a portable terminal such as a cellular phone or a PDA (personal digital assistant).
The portable terminal does not have a printer driver. With the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-256165, even a portable terminal may possibly perform printing by selecting folders corresponding to printing conditions one by one. With such a technique, however, all the printing conditions (folders) need to be specified one by one every time, which is quite troublesome.
The technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-118095 does not disclose any device relating to a user interface. Therefore, it is difficult for an operator other than an administrator to understand what kind of print processing is done for each folder.